Collectivization and Industrialization

In November 1927, Joseph Stalin launched his "revolution from above" by
setting two extraordinary goals for Soviet domestic policy: rapid
industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. His aims were
to erase all traces of the capitalism that had entered under the New
Economic Policy and to transform the Soviet Union as quickly as
possible, without regard to cost, into an industrialized and completely
socialist state.

Stalin's First Five-Year Plan, adopted by the party in 1928, called for
rapid industrialization of the economy, with an emphasis on heavy
industry. It set goals that were unrealistic-- a 250 percent increase
in overall industrial development and a 330 percent expansion in heavy
industry alone. All industry and services were nationalized, managers
were given predetermined output quotas by central planners, and trade
unions were converted into mechanisms for increasing worker
productivity. Many new industrial centers were developed, particularly
in the Ural Mountains, and thousands of new plants were built
throughout the country. But because Stalin insisted on unrealistic
production targets, serious problems soon arose. With the greatest
share of investment put into heavy industry, widespread shortages of
consumer goods occurred.

The First Five-Year Plan also called for transforming Soviet
agriculture from predominantly individual farms into a system of large
state collective farms. The Communist regime believed that
collectivization would improve agricultural productivity and would
produce grain reserves sufficiently large to feed the growing urban
labor force. The anticipated surplus was to pay for
industrialization. Collectivization was further expected to free many
peasants for industrial work in the cities and to enable the party to
extend its political dominance over the remaining peasantry.

Stalin focused particular hostility on the wealthier peasants, or
kulaks. About one million kulak households (some five million people)
were deported and never heard from again. Forced collectivization of
the remaining peasants, which was often fiercely resisted, resulted in
a disastrous disruption of agricultural productivity and a catastrophic
famine in 1932-33. Although the First Five-Year Plan called for the
collectivization of only twenty percent of peasant households, by 1940
approximately ninety-sevenpercent of all peasant households had been
collectivized and private ownership of property almost entirely
eliminated. Forced collectivization helped achieve Stalin's goal of
rapid industrialization, but the human costs were incalculable.

The next 1932 letter documents in great detail the devastating effects of
collectivization in the Novosibirsk area of Siberia. An accompanying
physician's report describes the deleterious medical conditions the
famine has produced. This document is among the first detailed
descriptions of the collectivization and its results in Siberia.

Letter of April 9,
1932, from Feigin to Ordzhonikidze (a close friend
of Stalin's), about conditions on the kolkhozes (collective farms), and